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7 Kultur, Kommunikation, Medien
| Sprache / Kulturinstitutionen, Archive, Bibliotheken, Museen, Galerien, Ausstellungen / Kulturtheorien, Soziokultur / Presse / Alternativpresse / Gegenöffentlichkeit, Medientheorie / Rundfunk / Fernsehen / Informationsübermittlung / Internet / Open Source / Netzkritik, Netzkultur, Netzkunst / Neitzbewegung, Netzaktivismus / E-Texte, Digitale Texte / Kino / Theater / Musik / Bücher / Verlage, Literatur / Zensur / Kunst / Satire, Humor
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| Systematik: | ID-Archiv EATC id-e-7342 |
| | Status: | Changed | | Checked: | 03-03-02 04:11:06 PM |
| | Adresse: | The Power Foundation A8, 21 Victoria Square Bristol, BS8 4ES, UK +44-(0)117-923-8312 +44-(0)117-973-2133 (fax) http://www.powerfoundation.org http://www.powerfoundation.org/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi |
| | Selbstdarstellung: | | power (pou' er), n. 1. ability to do or act. 2. vigour, energy, as more; 3. active property; transmitting electricity; 4. ascendency; 5. instrument for applying energy The powerful imagination creates the event - Michel de Montaigne The powerfoundation was esablished in 1997 and from inception has had as its aim the interrogation of the ways in which we live and how we are governed. Our preference is for freedom—both of spirit and embodiment. Our main activity is to seek out and lay bare the dominant forms of power which operate in the societies of our late-modern age. In doing so we provide tools for critical thought and the necessary friendship between our members to pursue the dangerous and vital task of understanding where we are and where civilization is as a whole. By "power" we do not only means governments. Our focus is much broader and simultaneously specific. Power, for us, is what penetrates us, what runs through and around us, giving form and substance, and recognizability to social reality as a whole. It is the thing which fills an empty room; what we sense when we walk in upon a conversation; the looks and the things unsaid on the faces of the peoples we all pass in our daily lives. It everywhere to be seen because it exists in everything. But do we ever truly examine this reality? Where in our societies do we talk of such things? It is our right to understand the relations, the forms, the powers which affect our very lives, setting on them both conditions and possibilities, silences and statements. From the very first we are in contestation and collusion with relations of power—all of our lives What memories are burnt into us as it confronts us? Do parts of us leave with it as it passes through us? What lines and intersections form the passageways and the asperities which when we die we look back upon as the history of our lives? When and how did this vast network—institutional, governmental, economical, political, social—form, and how does it colonize and invest us? These are just a handful of the questions which are borne, which are awakened, by re-imagining what we mean when we say the word "power." We believe in that reimagining. It is our right to respond to the societies in which we find ourselves. We want to respond. In validating the right to imagine we express our belief in that which continually and forever will escape from the hold of power: the shared moment of astonishment and amazement that is possible between people when the beautiful discovery is made that none of this (reality, society ...) need have been like it is. Power is not what is held by governors or kings, and thereby amassed by them—it is far more unstable. It is continually mobile and in a relation of panic toward itself. This is because politics—the act of transforming the grip of power over one's life—is forever as present as the dull spaces of silence which overcode us with their monotony, or the factories or the prisons which are built as our destiny. To the empty space of the room we bring the vibrancy of a political hope that offers to power its refusal and accusation; the song and the dance of thought beyond power. Though power is everywhere, we are never trapped. Living is itself a wonder which finally we have realized—after so many years—can never be so totally colonized or made regular. There are always "remains." As well as encouraging the interrogation of power, the powerfoundation acts to encourage and allow for these remains. Its philosophical outlook it matched by a commitment to social action and thinking/feeling; the melding of each giving the possibility and the promise of living here in one's body, politically and ethically, with and amidst the lives of others. Our formative influences include the late Michel Foucault, historian of "systems of thought" at the Collège de France, Paris, from 1970 to 1984, Uruguayan writer and witness Eduardo Galeano, and poet and painter,William Blake. There are many others, and beyond these we rely on ourselves. In the spirit of friendship we engage with who we are, what we can be, what the world is, and what is imaginable beyond the limit of the limits of the societies in which we live. To maintain its independence, the powerfoundation does not seek or accept financial support from any government or government-funded agency. We depend entirely on contributions from individual donors and private foundations. If you would like support the work of the powerfoundation, please send an e-mail message to the foundation's development officer, Ryan Goldhaus, at ryan@powerfoundation.org |
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